Times Smears Edwards **bumped – important update added**
So the New
York Times runs a huge story on Edwards and his anti-poverty Center
for Promise and Opportunity. Good news, right? Not even close. Talk about loaded
language.
Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million,
came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the
stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise
and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister
charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the
main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself,
tax filings show.A spokesman for Mr. Edwards defended the center yesterday as a legitimate
tool against poverty.The organization became a big part of a shadow political apparatus for Mr.
Edwards after his defeat as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004
and before the start of his presidential bid this time around. Its officers
were members of his political staff, and it helped pay for his nearly constant
travel, including to early primary states. … ..
The main beneficiary was Mr. Edwards himself?
Shadow political apparatus?
What do the people Edwards helped have to say?
**crickets**
Greg
Sargent laid it out.
But if you are going to put such lines on your front page — if you are going
to publish an enormous story alleging that a person’s antipoverty program
was set up mainly to benefit the person who set it up — then basic journalistic
fairness would dictate that you make a genuine effort to see how the program
fulfilled its “stated” purpose of helping people. Surprisingly,
no mention of how the programs actually impacted people appears until the
story’s 18th paragraph — and at that point it comes from the mouth of an
Edwards spokesman. There’s no indication that the reporter made any genuine
independent effort at all to discover whether the programs helped anyone.
You’re kidding right? Someone had to actually at least try to talk to the people who came
into contact with the Edwards poverty programs to find out something.
You won’t believe
the upshot. Sargent writes that “the paper had turned down the chance
to speak to any people directly impacted by Edwards’ programs,” according
to the Edwards campaign. The Times has been asked for comment. The
ball’s in their court, but they’ve got some explaining to do and it better
be good; either that or expect a clarification at the very least.
More at DailyKos,
TalkLeft, DailyHowler,
with Byron
York taking a swipe without even noticing what’s left out of the article. But considering his lousy reporting on Clinton at TBA, I’m hardly shocked.
UPDATED (6.24.07): Greg Sargent got a response back from the Times. Then he completely dismantles it.
The Edwards campaign told us that the Times had taken a pass on speaking to beneficaries of the programs. So we asked both reporter Leslie Wayne and a Times spokesperson for a response.
Well, now we’ve received one. Times spokesperson Abbe Serphos has emailed us the following:
We gave the Edwards camp ample opportunity to respond, and we quoted their full response in the article.
The article focused on the activities of the Center for Promise and Opportunity, and how that benefited Mr. Edwards; it did not focus on the sister charity that provided the scholarship money. In fact, when it did mention that sister charity, it cast it in only a positive light, and noted how much it had given out in scholarships.
We genuinely appreciate the response, which was to our narrower criticism from Friday.
But in our view, the piece nonetheless is deeply flawed. And we’re going to use this occasion to try to argue in a broader way as clearly as possile why we think The Times badly botched this.
Here’s the problem… ..
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